


I Love You, Pavel

by catc10



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Multi, possible trigger for aborted dub-con, sexuality shaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 21:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catc10/pseuds/catc10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>LONG AGO I WROTE A BUNCH OF FIC FOR THE ST_XI_KINK_MEME AND THIS IS SOME OF IT.<br/>Prompt/Fill: http://community.livejournal.com/st_xi_kink_meme/11451.html?thread=11010747#t11010747</p>
<p>Sulu doesn't understand why he doesn't like kissing his boyfriend. Neither does anyone else.</p>
<p>tw: aborted dub-con</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Love You, Pavel

Sulu disengaged his mouth from Pavel's and pushed the younger man away, "No. No, we have to stop. I don't like this, Pavel."

"Is...is it because I am too young, Hikaru?"

Sulu smiled helplessly at his younger boyfriend's slight slur at saying his name and coming out with 'eekaaruu', "Lights thirty percent --no, Pasha, it's not. I swear it isn't! It's just that I'm not very...comfortable...kissing you."

Pavel removed his body from on top of the pilot and swung his legs off Sulu's thin mattress. "I am too young, you think. Or too smart? You had said you were alright with these things, Hikaru! But you still do not kiss me!" He crossed his skinny arms over his bird-like chest and threw a full-powered pout out across the room to his own bed.

Sulu sighed and sat up, straightening his shirts from the disarray that Pavel had put them into earlier trying to 'liven up' their session of uncomfortable necking. "I _am_ okay with those things, Pasha."

Pavel only turned to raise one pale eyebrow in the universal, _"yeah, right."_

Sulu twisted to sit next to Pavel on the edge of the bed.

"I swear it's not you, Pav. I've never really liked kissing anybody."

" _Other_ people were not meant to be! We are _perfect_ except for this, Hikaru!"

"Hey!"

"I mean it!" the teenager cried, standing up and turning to face Sulu with eyes starting to water, making their pale blue glimmer with unshed tears. "We have been together months, Hikaru, _months_. By the end of the first, I could not imagine life without you! We have had good days, and bad days, and the torture of living with our significant other only to find we _fit_ together in _every way!_ All ways but _this!_ Most couples argue that they do not communicate enough, or that they leave dirty socks or dishes or _something_ out on the floor! We have had all those arguments, Hikary, and come through alright --But you will not _kiss_ me, Hikary! And I have _tried_."

Sulu groped upwards at Pavel blindly as the other's tears finally started to fall.

"Hikaru, I have _tried_. We are perfect except for the fact that you cannot stomach to touch me. I tried waiting for you to be ready, I tried to ease you into it, I tried when you were sober and when you were drunk, and every time," he sobbed, " _every time_ : you push me away. What is wrong, Hikaru? You must look me in the eyes and _say_ it this time. _Please._ "

Sulu's mouth worked, heart stinging for Pavel's and jolting to realize that he'd not known what was going on in his boyfriend's active mind. "I--I love you, Pavel. I don't know what's wrong."

Silence.

"I have to go for a while, Hikaru. I just--you should probably think about what you want from me, and I mean _really want_. Because I _love_ you, Hikaru. And I'm not so sure you really know what that means."

Pavel stopped only once on his way out the door, in his closet for a duffel already packed and ready to go, and as the door hissed shut behind him, Sulu had time enough to think, " _I_ love you _\--how can I want anything from you when all I want is for you to be happy?"_

*

The next day, Kirk took Sulu aside on the bridge. "What's this I hear about Pavel spending the night at Uhura's and you two having gotten into a fight?"

"Uh...isn't that self explanatory, Jim?"

"In a general sense, yes, Sulu, it is, but I also hear he spent all night crying, so I'm a little more worried this time than the time you both spent three days not talking because you didn't want to invite him to meet your parents on our last earth-based shore-leave."

"He wouldn't have gotten to visit his own parents!"

"That's not the point! The point is that that argument is over, and this one just started! Now tell me: what are you fighting about that has _my friend_ showing up at Uhura's with a _duffel bag?_ "

Sulu sighed, and shuffled his feet, and shifted his eyes around and sharply aware of the several sets of eyes and ears focused in on his and the captain's conversation. "Later, Jim. In the mess hall--we're on duty."

Jim scowled, and nodded curtly, "back to your station, lieutenant."

*

In the mess hall the table that Sulu and Kirk sat at was understandably filled to brimming and more with interested parties. There was hardly a person on board the ship that wasn't in some way or fashion friends with her pilot or navigator. While command-track and operations personnel saw them regularly on the bridge and in operations meetings, both volunteered their time regularly with the sciences staff --Sulu with the soft sciences and horticultural departments, Chekov with physics and Engineering -- and they spent more time than might be advisable healing up in the med bay. As a result, pretty much the whole Enterprise was going to want all the gossip on this particular development in the social pool.

"So," said Scotty, "about you and the laddie?"

Sulu sighed for what felt like the millionth time that day, and gave a wary eye to every eye riveted to him. "It was a fight, sort of. It's been kind of a problem for a while, I guess. Bigger than I thought, at any rate."

Kirk coughed, "Yes, duh, but what _about?_ "

Sulu felt the heat rising in his cheeks and mumbled a few obscenities under his breath, "I don't like to kiss him."

Scotty pulled back a bit, "I'm sorry, son, but did I just hear you say you don't like to _kiss_ your _boyfriend?_ "

"Shut up! I know! It's weird and ridiculous, but I'm not comfortable kissing him! So he says that I'm a liar about being okay with his age and his brains and what else ever --but I am! I'm okay with that! It's just the -- _stupid kissing!"_

"That's it?" asked Kirk, disbelieving.

"Yes!"

"You don't like kissing him?" the captain reiterated, hands gesturing at Sulu in disbelief.

"Yes."

"I don't get it," someone said from across the room, to the immediate and repetitive agreements of everyone present.

Kirk waved the sudden noise down with a hand, "Seems to me like you need to think about your feelings towards Pavel, Sulu. Maybe he's right and you do have a problem with that stuff --and you don't even know it. But figure it out soon, Pavel's really hurt by all this."

"I know," Hikaru moaned helplessly. _"I don't like kissing anyone,"_ he thought, and his stomach churned to know that his Pasha was somewhere else on the ship giving some version of this same conversation to some other group of friends and onlookers and trying to explain that Sulu just _didn't want him_ , because it _wasn't true_ , but...motions of agreement radiated out from the table, and conversation turned to other things, leaving Sulu moping, alone and lonely, in the middle of a crowded table.

*

A day later Uhura pulled Sulu into an out-of-the way corridor on his way to the gym to morosely pretend to practice with his foil and gives him the most heartfelt look he'd ever seen.

"How are you holding up?"

Hikaru feels the loosening of his shoulders and slumps half-boneless on the bright white wall. "I'm dying, Uhura," he says. "I want to hold Pavel again, and tell him everything's okay, but I can't! I love him --I know it, I've never felt like this about _anyone_ , and I've felt some pretty outrageous things about people, and what I believed we could be one day. But...I don't want to kiss him, Uhura. I don't want to make love with him, or anything dirty, for that matter...it's off putting, and it's...he wants it, right?"

He looks at his friend and wants her to say that everything will be okay, and that Pavel has forgiven him (Pavel always forgave him) and that he'd be coming back to their quarters soon. She only kept the look of friendly pity and worry settled across her lovely features.

"Why isn't loving him _enough_ , Uhura?"

"You don't want anything sexual with him at _all,_ Hikaru?"

"Nothing."

Her face crumples, "Maybe you don't have a problem with his age, Hikaru--" he perks up, heart rising in his chest for the first time since Chekov had gentle held his hand, right before pushing him down on the bed for the disastrous attempt at amor, "--maybe you're just...Did you ever think that maybe your feelings for Pavel were platonic love?"

Sulu blanched, "No!"

Uhura scowled and crossed her slender arms benath her breasts, "Oh?"

"No! I have four sisters, Uhura, I would know platonic from romantic love, I think!"

"Obviously not!"

They stared each other down for a few minutes before Uhura huffed and walked away with a threatening, "You'd better figure this out soon, Hikaru. For _Pavel's_ sake."

*

McCoy is the one that comes to him with something like an answer, four days after the fight, and only because Sulu is just about to have a nervous breakdown on shift because Chekov won't talk to him without the sad, pitiful smile of someone with a broken heart.

"Lieutenant!" the doctor shouts over the mild quiet of the bridge, and everyone jumped. "Report to Medbay. Now."

"Uh..."

"Do as your CMO asks, Lieutenant."

"Aye, Captain. Coming, Doctor McCoy."

Sulu rose from his chair, relinquishing it to his deputy, and followed McCoy out. The walk to Medbay was silent, Sulu fidgeting his fingers and toes, eyes darting from the stoic doctor to the walls, and back again. Medbay was calm, no patients to care for save for one clumsy Engineer sleeping off a sedative and a broken arm in the biobed furthest from the bulkhead.

"Hello, doctor."

"Hey, Chris. No chart, thanks, Sulu and I just need to talk."

Christine Chapel's finely sculpted brow hiked up, but she made no comment, and led both men through to McCoy's seldom used psychiatric office, which consisted of a couch, a chair, both plush, one blanket, and a potted plant that Sulu suspected was fake.

The doctor wasted no time sitting Sulu on the couch and taking the chair for himself. "You know why you're here."

"Yes, McCoy."

"Then tell me, as honestly as you can, have you ever felt sexual feelings for anyone, _ever?"_

Sulu's face screwed up and one foot tapped nervously. "No. I don't think so. Everyone before Pavel never got that far --I was too young for it, I guess."

"Were you over the age of fourteen?"

"Yes."

This line of questioning was odd.

"Then you weren't too young for it, Sulu. So you've never wanted to kiss anyone, have sex with them, touch them intimately, or have them touch you?"

Sulu's stomach rolled and he shook his head in the negative.

"What do those things make you feel?"

"Um...uncomfortable?"

"And what do you think _of_ those things?"

"Well, they're romantic, I guess."

McCoy's hazel eyes pinned Hikaru's black ones. "And how do you feel about imagining yourself doing these things?"

Blushing, Sulu stammered, "Well, I feel...sort of silly!"

McCoy huffed and gave Sulu a half-grin that didn't seem very happy, "Congratulations, kid. You're an asexual!"

"I'm a what?"

The doctor spent the next five minutes outlining for the pilot what exactly 'asexual' meant, to which Sulu spent fifteen minutes in sputtering relieved monologue about how thankful he was to have an answer and how _'this one time'_ and _'that other time'_ and _'this incident'_ all _finally made sense._

Sulu returned to the bridge with a bare, hidden smile, comfortable for the first time in almost a week to sit next to his Pavel.

*

"Uh...I thought humans couldn't reproduce on their own? You _are_ human, lieutenant?"

"What? Captain, that's _reproducing_ asexually! No, I just don't have sexual feelings. For anybody. Never will."

In the crowded mess hall, Sulu sat with Jim Kirk, Montgomery Scott, and Spock, who were all paused mid-action and staring at him. "That makes no sense," said the captain at last.

"I must agree with the captain, lieutenant, as the biological drive to reproduce is integral to your psyche and mental well-being, as well as a chemical compulsion hardwired into the human brain."

Sulu gaped, "Wait, so we can come across giant, sentient baby nebula, but thinking that I don't have a sex drive is impossible to accept?"

"The baby nebula was not human, Lieutenant." Spock pointed out, delicately spearing pieces of lettuce onto his fork and chewing. "Your physical drives and its are going to differ."

"Also, yes, it's impossible. I don't believe in no-win scenarios, Sulu, but...sex is awesome! Why wouldn't you want to do it?" Jim cried, "Chekov just isn't compatible for you physically, I bet! Maybe you only feel attracted to women? Or older guys? And Chekov doesn't fit what you get hard for? What _was_ the last thing you got hard for?"

Sulu felt no shame flinging a pile of mystery-meat into his captain's face.

"Och, leave the laddie alone, captain! No worries, Sulu, I'm sure this is just a phase. After Pavel's been away for a little while longer, you'll swoop in, sword flailin', and sweep him off his feet and right into bed! You just need the space to grow in!"

Sulu crumpled a bit, "But I'm pretty sure that--"

"Nope!" Scotty said with a laugh, "Just you wait, son, this'll blow over. I know it."

Jim toasted to it, and Scotty joined in, leaving the vulcan first officer and the pilot to their meals.

*

One of Sulu's botanist buddies said that Scotty was right, while six others said that it was the Captain who was correct. Uhura seemed to fall into the category of 'it's a phase', while Chapel vehemently disagreed to the cry of 'physical incompatibility'. There was a further theory put up by some of the Engineering crew that Sulu's supposed- _love_ for Pavel was platonic, and Gaila swore up and down that asexuality didn't count- he was just a late bloomer. It was...getting tiresome.

It seemed like every conversation he had with someone spent two minutes on whatever topic he'd started the conversation on, and then wheeled through very little effort onto Pavel, their relationship, and what his 'asexuality' was really a symptom of.

It was getting to the point that Sulu could use it to time things. Conversation changed topics? Tea must be ready!

Pavel had been living with Uhura for a week when Sulu went to her for advice.

"Uhrua, I don't understand! I can't help what I am! Why is it so hard to accept that I just don't have those kinds of feelings? It doesn't mean I love Pavel any _less!_ "

Uhura, sitting next to him on one of the many observation deck benches, replied, "It's because this sexuality of yours is hard to accept, Hikaru."

Hikaru knew as well as she did that she didn't quite believe it herself, she was the one who told Pavel and Sulu how the other was coping, after all --and neither was doing very well. "We're all programed to like sex, Hikaru. I'm sure that when-- _if_ you feel it's right, you'll enjoy it, too."

"You're saying I don't love Pavel."

"No, no, that's not it--"

"Yes, it is, Uhura. I know what everyone is thinking, it's not like you can't hear what people are saying behind your back when you live in a metal ship where everything echoes, you know. They say it's platonic, they say it's not real, they say it's a phase, they say we're not compatible -- _I love Pavel_." Sulu punched the bench hard and heard the crack of his knuckles before a shiver of cold pain radiated up his arm. "I just don't want _that._ "

*

In the medical bay, McCoy was Sulu's only solace. "What'd you do?"

"Punched a bench."

"Frustrated?"

"Yes."

"Too bad. Hold still."

"Ow."

"Shouldn't have punched a bench if you didn't like the bone-knitter. Want a drink?"

"No."

"Fine, but I'm having one."

The doctor poured himself a few fingers of bourbon, dropped in some replicated ice, and sat back on the edge of an adjacent biobed. Sulu grumbled.

"Fine, I'll take one, too."

"Bourbon, whiskey, or scotch?"

"Uh...what's the difference?"

"What's the--?! Oh lordy, you have some learnin' to do."

*

The first time Sulu spoke to Pavel after the argument, it was a few days later, ten days since the fight, which was really more of a disagreement and a separation than anything else, had happened. Sulu had just returned from one of the Enterprise's famously botched away-missions, during which the planetary natives had decided that spears were a perfectly acceptable welcome, and had returned unscathed save for a scrape across one palm where he'd caught himself on some rocks. It stung, but hadn't been serious enough to warrant the dermal regenerators when plain disinfectant would do.

Pavel showed up at their quarters, and wordlessly sat next to Sulu on the edge of Pavel's bed.

"I slept here last night," Sulu admitted. "It smells like you."

"I am sorry for not speaking with you sooner."

"No, no, I think we needed the time. You never have to apologize, Pasha. Chances are, I already forgave you."

Chekov smiled and twirled a curl around one slender, pale, digit. "I know, Hikaru."

"So..."

"So. Uhura says that you feel nothing sexual towards anybody, and that you feel that you never will, and I should not be offended that I am not an exception to this."

Sulu was quick to grab Chekov's skinny hand and take it between his own, "Never, Pavel! I don't want to be with them --only _you_. You _are_ an exception!"

"But you do not wish to sleep with me."

Sulu's hopes rotted instantly in his guts, "Er...no."

"I hope that this is as she says, Hikaru, and as Scotty says, too. I hope that very soon you will come to your senses and _want_ me, because I find it very hard to believe it now when you say you love me --and that," he took a shuddering breath, " _that_ is harder than anything else, because I want so much to believe you like I used to."

As Pavel left, Hikaru felt the snap- _crack_ of his heart splitting in two.

*

The whispers were getting unbearable.

Two weeks since the 'fight' and the other crew members were starting to shift from 'curious' through 'pity' and settling into 'pissed'. At first, it seemed like this argument wasn't any bigger deal than any other argument on board, a couple would fight, one would cave, and they'd either break up (to the tutting of the nurses), or get back together (to the sagely nods of the Engineers), but this had dragged on too long to be anything short of serious, now.

Sulu weathered the brunt of it, of course, being the main problem to the pair's usually unblemished happiness. Kirk had bluntly had _enough_ of Sulu's silliness, and refused to deal with the pilot off the bridge or outside of duty-requirements. "Get over it and sleep with him," the Captain had said, "you'll be better off for it and we can get _on_ with our lives!"

Uhura, too, was bordering on losing her temper, trying to understand Sulu's position, disagreeing with it, and then trying to comfort Pavel every night.

Scotty had stopped speaking to Sulu in the strangest way possible: he wasn't _avoiding_ the pilot, per se, but within five minutes of Sulu entering a room, he found six flimsy and one sort-of-good reasons to _leave_ it.

Spock just seemed to take everything in stride, as he did all things, the bastard, and regarded the whole thing as a human curiosity that he watched and weighed under his own terms and then promptly failed to share with the rest of the class.

Pavel simply returned to not speaking to Hikaru.

As had most of the crew.

It wasn't outright _unfriendly_ , because on a ship of four-hundred thirty-some odd beings, it was _really hard_ to justify ostracizing someone, and to be honest, they really did think of Sulu as their confused friend...But conversations with him became difficult when all you could think about was the fact that he apparently found sex repulsive (not true) and what could you say to that?

It led to a lot of time spent hiding in McCoy's office, waiting for the man to come off shift to talk about anything, _anything_ not related to Pavel and Sulu's relationship and the pending disintegration thereof.

As time passed and whispers floated down corridors, it was harder and harder for Sulu to convince himself that he _really was_ just different from everyone else. That he just _didn't want_ what they wanted when their arguments were so _hard_ to disprove. Why couldn't they just _believe_ him? Why couldn't he just _be_ with Pavel?

It was so _hard_.

*

Sulu was a little wary accepting Garrison's invitation to his quarters. The yeoman was one of the bridge crew attendants that often stepped in for Sulu when the alpha-shift pilot had to step out during shift, such as the trip to Medbay that had hailed the damning revelation of 'asexuality'. He was a taller man than most, and looked more like a security officer than a command-track hopeful, but he was genial, if a bit block-headed.

"We're just getting together to watch some movies, Sulu --you need friends right now."

Sulu agreed, both to the sentiment, and to the invitation, and so found himself happily watching the end of some _old_ twentieth century film called 'Die Hard'. The premise was thin, and the action terribly unrealistic, but the characters were fleshed out and believable --all but the villain who was such an over-the-top bad guy, and the FBI (Sulu had no idea what that acronym stood for, and neither did most of the party-goers) agents who spent so much time playing 'better than thou' that they couldn't utilize more than ten percent of what they were given to work with. It was hilarious, and ended in an old Christmas carol playing over credits, and it made Sulu smile.

"What's next?" he asked, looking at his friends with bright eyes.

"Nothing much," said Garrison from behind him, to the sound of something ripping.

Sulu twisted his head around, "What was that? You okay?" he made to swivel Garrison's desk chair around, only to be stopped by another friend's hand.

"HOLD HIM!" Garrison shouted with glee, and held up the role of silvered duct tape, a product older than _dirt_ and still useful beyond human reckoning.

"HEY! What are you guys _doing?_ " Sulu hadn't the sense yet to be scared, his friends were smiling, and though they were using infuriatingly sticky and tough tape to tie him to his chair, he wasn't actually going to be _hurt_ , at least, he wouldn't think so. Gaila giggled at him while securing his legs together, the chair not having supports in convenient location for this use. He laughed along with her and Garrison, seeing Sulu securely bound, spun him wildly. "Is this some kind of drinking game? 'Cause I promise you: I'll puke!" Sulu shouted over the group's laughter.

"Put the video on!" one of the star-chart analyzers shouted, and a round of applause went out. Sulu laughed as he was spun around again, then jerked to a stop facing the view screen, small for the number of people trying to watch it, but plenty clear enough for no one to mind. Terrible piano music began to play.

Sulu began to get nervous when the title screen came up, _Andorian Delights_ , and several of the pilot's present company began to whoop. "Guys?"

"Settle down, Sulu!"

"Is this a porno? Are you seriously all going to watch a _porno?!_ "

"Think of it," Garrison said, "as solving your problem, yeah? We get you to pop a stiffie and you can go home to Pavel and end this nonsense!"

"That's not how it _works_ , Garrison! Let me go! Right now!"

"Just stick around for five minutes!" someone, Sulu couldn't tell who in the darkness, whined.

"Yeah!"

"Seriously! You've never even _tried!_ "

Sulu wanted to say that he _had_ , and that it _hadn't worked_ , but he settled for "This is _not_ okay, Garrison, and you need to let me loose. Now." He did his best to keep the wavering out of his tone. "I don't not do this because I'm a prude, it's because I don't feel _comfortable_ with it!"

Gaila looked at him pityingly, and behind her on the screen, two beings, one human, one andorian, were already set to stripping one another of their clothes. "Gaila!" Sulu hissed.

"Not now, Sulu! Watch, enjoy!"

He thudded his head back on the chair, and someone pulled his head up to face the screen again. The characters (if they could be called that) finished stripping one another and set to biting each other's faces in what Sulu assumed to be passionate kissing. It looked to tongue-y and all together unsanitary. His stomach rolled. "Guys?"

"Shh!"

Fingers were put places on screen that Sulu would have been happy to have never seen, and he felt the very real urge to cry, "Guys?" he tried to say again. His voice was too weak for anyone to mind over their own catcalls and ridiculous quips. Blood rushing in his ears and making his face hot, Sulu couldn't be bothered trying to figure out what innuendos they were making.

Unhappily, Sulu watched the screen and felt worse, and worse.

_"How can adult video stars stand so many people seeing their bodies? Why would they want to do that to themselves? I get that it feels good, I guess...but...isn't this supposed to be private?"_

He must have made some noise, because Gaila, caressing her stomach in a way that assured Sulu it was not her _stomach_ she wished to be rubbing, turned to look him in the face mischievously. He glared.

She trailed deft fingers up his pant-leg, "happy?" she asked, trailing up to his knee, and then finger-walking up his thigh. He concentrated on breathing and tried not to blink. She winked and laid her hand flat over his crotch.

Her eyes went wide, and she finally _looked_ at him through the darkness.

"Oh," she breathed, "Oh my god. Oh god. Stop the tape! Stop it! Stop!"

Everyone's attention twisted around to the horror in her voice, even as someone groped at the controls to eject the vid disk or help Gaila with cutting the bindings holding Sulu in place.

"I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, I didn't even--" Gaila was saying.

"S'okay. Yeah. Okay. I get it..." Sulu was staring hard at the floor.

"He's really--oh my god guys he really isn't into it, I mean--seriously. He's not!"

The party of fifteen slowly lint-gathered her meaning and drew up their own faces of terror and shame. Sulu stood as Gaila finished with the last of his restraints.

Garrison was the first to speak, "Dude --I--We didn't realize--"

"I need to go now."

"Yeah--yeah sure."

Sulu left.

*

He went straight to his room --it was no longer _theirs_ \-- laid down on what had been Chekov's bunk and shivered himself to sleep.

He did not show up for shift the next morning.

*

Kirk showed up when his assigned shift finished. Sulu expected him to be mad. He had expected a comm earlier, asking where he was (lying awake, dreading the call), but it had never come. Kirk just let himself in quietly and, after locating him buried under both blankets on Chekov's half of the room, sat down next to him.

"Garrison told me. I'm sorry."

"I missed my shift."

"Garrison covered it when it became apparent you weren't going to be on time, then told me why you hadn't shown up at all. He's sorry."

"He's forgiven. Why the hell're _you_ sorry?"

Jim Kirk swallowed thickly, "I...you don't feel sexual things, and I failed to accept that, Sulu. Even if you're human, I should have accepted that --on my pride as a starship Captain. A _Fleet FLAG_ Captain."

"Forgiven."

"Just like that?" Jim asked, nudging the lump under the blanket.

"Yeah. None of you _meant_ harm--you just _caused_ it."

Jim flinched where Sulu couldn't see. "That's mighty big of you, Hikaru."

"Blame Pasha."

Jim flinched again. "You're off duty for the next three days, and you might want to visit Bones down in Sickbay...he's raving something terrible, and might just kill any of those party-goers if they get injured anytime soon."

"Good."

"I thought you forgave them."

"I don't mean it."

Jim smiled weakly, and gave the lump a few awkward pats before leaving.

*

The walk to McCoy's office was awkward to say the least, and mortifying to be honest. People either scrambled out of his way or took him aside to personally apologize for their behavior. Uhura ran into him and spent five minutes apologizing to him, but to her credit, she didn't cry on him. Scotty took one step into the corridor he was in and blanched, turning around and running back whence he had come.

Chapel ushered him straight back to the room with the couch, chair, and fake plant the moment he hit the bay, where he was joined promptly by the CMO.

"I'm supposed to ask if you want to press charges," said McCoy, "for harassment. But...knowing you, you won't want to, am I right?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me, Sulu, what _do_ you want to do?"

"I'd like to hold Pavel for a bit."

"He's not here, kid."

"Then will you hold _me_?"

McCoy, grumbling, did.

*

The next day on the way to the mess for breakfast Sulu bumped into Chekov. Chekov, glancing around, pulled Sulu aside into a corridor that led to one of the lesser-used lab rooms. The lights flickered here for no reason that anyone could discern, and it led to a creeping sense of nerves for most and made is a good spot for people to have a private conversation, further bonus-ed by a sharp turn right ahead of the main corridor that dampened echoes outward significantly.

"Hikaru," Chekov said.

"Pavel," Sulu replied, unable to keep the happy sigh from his voice completely.

"I'm sorry!" both said at once, jerking forward and knocking heads harshly, "Ow!"

Rubbing at his forehead, Hikaru grinned weakly, "I'm...really sorry. For not realizing how upset I made you. I really just...I wasn't comfortable."

Also easing his aching head, Pavel too, apologized. "I as well, Hikaru. I thought that this feeling of yours was--silly! or somehow less than mine, and...I'm very sorry." His pale blue eyes turned to Sulu, just barely the same height as he, shining in the stuttering lights.

"It's okay," Hikaru said quickly, "I know that it's...pretty unusual."

"No, I don't--"

"Will you come home now? You know how I feel about you, Pasha --that hasn't changed. You know I mean it now, don't you?" Hikaru took a deep breath, the seed of hope in his chest pulsing with life born from his love of this crazy, sensitive, energetic navigator made up of elbows and curls. "Pavel Chekov --I'm too young to say this and mean it like I do, and you're too young to say it back and mean it, but...I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Chekov sucked in a gasp.

"That sounds so serious, I'm sorry!" Sulu rambled, "It's...it's just, I love to hold you, and to come home to you, and to hear all the stories about your day, and just about a million other things about you, and I want you to know that this bump in the road is...it's _okay_ , you know?"

Pavel grabbed both of Hikaru's hands in his own and gazed at them. His curls blocked his and Sulu's eyes from meeting. Their joined hands were warm, and Sulu, happy to hold his Pasha's hands again, smiled.

"I slept with Scotty."

The statement hung there.

"I wanted to know, if you _really_ didn't want it --if I could live without it."

Sulu could hear the 'I can' before Pavel ever said it.

"...I _can't_ ," Pavel choked. "I'm sorry, Hikaru, but I don't think we can be together anymore."

Pavel left Hikaru in a seldom used corridor among flickering lights and the shattered pieces of his heart glittering all across the floor.

*

McCoy refilled Sulu's glass with a generous portion of whiskey, his penchant and preference for scotch understandably dissipated. Sulu had stumbled into McCoy's office earlier that morning in a daze, then spent the doctor's whole shift cursing his office and pacing, swearing up and down to _motherfucking kill that damn scott_ , but had yet to actually gain the nerve to _leave_ the office itself, always pausing at the open door, red-faced and trembling, before turning on his heel and retreating. When the time neared twenty-three hundred McCoy had grabbed a tray in the mess with two bowls of oatmeal and some bananas. Sullenly, Sulu had eaten his portion over grumps and angrily bitten lips and McCoy kept the alcohol flowing as Sulu passed from 'anger' to 'depression'.

"I wonder if I'd just... _done it_ if he'd have accepted that? Could I have stayed with him if I just had sex with him?"

"Don't go there, Sulu."

"I'm serious! I could have done that for him!"

"You don't want to do that for him, though."

"Sure I do! I would do that for him!"

McCoy none-too-gently thwacked the pilot across the back of his head, ruffling his distressingly mussed hair. "No, you don't."

Sulu turned saddened black eyes to to doctor, "But if I'd just sucked it up and done it with him, he'd be happy, and I'd be with him, and I could have faked it forever I bet..."

McCoy sighed heavily and circled his desk to take a seat next to the moping younger man. "Hikaru, I'm gonna be honest with you: Even having a _kid_ wasn't enough to make faking it with my wife worth it. It builds up, kid. You'll do just fine in the beginning yes, but it will get harder and harder to pretend, and you'll start making up excuses that are good," he looked at Sulu, who was giving him slightly dazed rapt attention, "and then you'll make up less good ones. Soon, you'll be using every flimsy half-thought up denial you can't really find and use that, and by then even the _thought_ of touching him will make you unhappy, and then, as everything rots around you and makes you _both_ upset sons of bitches, you'll have really wished you never tried at all."

"Yeah, but you _liked_ sex with your wife --Pav and I are _perfect_ outside of this. _Perfect_. All _complimentary and shit_." Sulu sloshed around his whiskey and grimaced. "That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?"

McCoy clacked their glasses together, "Completely. No couple is perfect, Sulu. You can only get near-misses. This is what they call a _deal-breaker._ "

"Yeah, and now the deal's off and he's sleeping with _Scotty._ "

"Rebound, Hikaru."

"What?"

"He's rebounding. They won't stay together. The first relationship after a serious one ends never lasts."

"Oh. Wanna be my rebound, McCoy? You don't have to kiss me and stuff --I don't need that stuff!"

"Why would I want that?"

Sulu's face crumpled, "I was just asking, McCoy. S'not like we'd've been together forever. You said yourself rebounds don't last."

"Yeah, exactly," the doctor said, grabbing one Sulu's chilly hands in one of his own, larger ones. "Why would I want that?"

Sulu sputtered, and the doctor laughed into the last sip of his bourbon, "I never liked sex with my wife."

**Author's Note:**

> Probably the fic I've gotten the most response on over the years, written when I was just coming to learn about my own ace-ness. Much love to the original prompter, much love to those who loved the original posted on the kink meme!


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